The scenes that played out in Suhasini’s household when she was a child will be an integral part of I’m an actor, Your Honour , an English play that revolves around her father, Charuhasan.
Based on the lawyer-actor’s book Thinking on my Feet , the seeds of the play were sown far away in England, where Suhasini was discussing her father with her sister. “We knew all the cases and we knew the man. But I didn’t want to mix my personal side and business and stage it as a play. Nevertheless, I wrote a couple of scenes.”
The think-tank behind the Gollapudi Srinivas Awards, where it will be staged this evening, loved it. “We took out details of his legal life from the book he had penned, and I, of course, know his real life from memory,” says Suhasini.
For the play, she wanted a father-daughter actor combination and so roped in Y Gee Mahendra and Madhuvanthi Arun for vital roles. “We started rehearsing and reading then. It can be two hours, but I’ve made a shorter version (1 hour 10 minutes) for the awards ceremony.”
This version will include flashback portions – and those will be in film. “I wanted multiple media to be used. Cartoonist Madhan’s daughter Amitha has done about a hundred drawings for us that we have used in the background,” she adds, “I specifically wanted the film portions to be dramatic and the stage portions cinematic.”
In that sense, I’m an actor, Your Honour marries cinema and theatre. Suhasini believes that there should be more of that. “We know of instances of stage plays being made into films. But I really think that all Tamil films can be staged; I’d like to take up K Balachander’s films and do that.”
The play will be staged at 6.45 pm today at Music Academy.
